Problem
I have node.js module that is using crypto.createHash to generate md5 hash.
Recently I noticed that hash generated by crypto module is different in new versions:
Code
require('crypto').createHash('md5').update('¥').digest('hex')
Node.js v0.10.0
Outputs: ab3af8566ddd20d7efc9b314abe90755
Node.js v6.1.0
Outputs: 07625e142e4ac5961de57472657a88c1
Question
I was wondering what causes that in new version and how can I solve this?
Update
Similar issues on GitHub:
- https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/6813
- https://github.com/node-xmpp/client/issues/206
Some inputs in Node v6+ calculate a different hash than previous Node versions.
Basically, when you pass a string to .update(), with Node versions before v6 the default encoding was binary, but for Node v6 that changed to utf-8.
For example, take this code:
require('crypto').createHash('md5').update('¥').digest('hex')
This outputs ab3af8566ddd20d7efc9b314abe90755 on Node pre-6 and 07625e142e4ac5961de57472657a88c1 on Node 6.
If you want Node 6 to output the same as pre-6 versions, you have to tell .update() to use binary encoding:
require('crypto').createHash('md5').update('¥', 'binary').digest('hex')
Or the other way around (make Node pre-6 output the same as 6):
require('crypto').createHash('md5').update('¥', 'utf-8').digest('hex')
Just like mark this issue in github:
https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/6813 is about the default encoding for digests that was changed to utf8 in v5/v6 and in v4 and earlier it was binary
